Cyber Monday

You remember in the The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when Riff Raff and his sister do that weird elbow sex thing? The word “Cyber” conjures up an image of two people on either side of a network connection doing just that with their computer monitor. One looking like Riff (the girl) and the other looking like Magenta (the guy). 4.3 million shoppers a minute visited sites on “Cyber Monday”, elbow sexing their way into the American dream, with one-click shopping and buying 10% more crap on Monday than they did on Black Friday.

In most cities “rush hour” doesn’t really refer to a single hour. Maybe it’s half an hour some days and 4 hours others (ever driven from Santa Monica to Pasadena at 6:05pm?!?!). Cyber Monday seems to be pretty similar, having started some time around Thursday for a number of sites and seemingly still going “while supplies last.” But not all supplies last. I saw that deal Amazon was running for an 8GB iPod for $40 less than what you can get the same thing on Apple.com for. Talk about getting a little pre-elbow sex wax on the monitor, just thinkin’ about that deal! Too bad that supplies didn’t last. Although oddly, they still have plenty of them, now they just want more for the iPod touch 8 GB ($20 less than Apple still). So did supplies last (btw, still cheaper than on Apple.com)?!?!. I guess you can have a Kindle instead, which Amazon claims is their most popular product this year. Of course they’d say that though, it’s their product; I’m sure Barnes and Noble is going to claim the Nook is selling like hotcakes even if they only sell 3 of them. One of which will be bought by Zack, who needs to buy one of every electronic item ever made and carry them all with him on flights (hmmm, he must have a Bag of Holding +4 to keep it in, BTW).

And practically every site had free shipping. Of course, having said that, I don’t think I’ve paid for shipping when purchasing something online from any site other than eBay in a long, long time, and I even shop for my frickin’ groceries online – w00t Gopher Grocery or Lund’s if I’m fealin’ all high falutin’ (btw, they word bombastic actually appears in the definition of falutin). But back to Manic Monday, you see it actually was a lower total volume of sales day than in previous years, even sporting a massive 33% gain on traffic. Now, that could be because times are a little tight (over 10% unemployment rate not including Santa Claus’ – aka Mr. Pig Flu Carrier to all the kiddies), it could be because the average online consumer is way more uber-smart about their shopping habits (Hot Patootie, Bless My Soul, I doubt that) or it could be that it’s just because the deals (other than the ones that are meant to get you hooked in) just weren’t that great. Oh Brad, I’m so glad that there’s still a month of shopping to go. And if all else fails. There’s always iTunes Gift Cards (which by the way costs $12 but is worth $15, meaning that at least 3 songs you buy with it will suck).